Thursday Links: Auction Horror Think Piece

"Study for the Nurse from the Battleship Potemkin", Francis Bacon, 1957

WSJ’s comparing buying a Bacon painting to buying the services of a sports player (“The Art of Fielding”). William Powhida points out that unlike art, a player isn’t “private property that we may or may not see again.” [Wall Street Journal]

AFC’s twitter feed is filled with tweets expressing horror over last night’s record breaking auction results at Sotheby’s. (This sales video for Warhol’s Car Crash prompted ArtInfo’s Tyler Green to ask how the Sotheby’s people live with themselves). What people buy isn’t the problem here. It’s the income inequality driving the success of these auctions that deserves outrage and action. [Twitter]

The term “hedge fund activist” has been coined. Apparently this term describes shareholders who exert pressure on the companies they’ve invested in, to change in directions they see fit. Daniel S. Loeb, for example, thinks Sotheby’s needs a makeover. [Dealbook]

Lily Allen takes issue with sexism in the music industry. Cue the think pieces. [The Guardian]

Selina Gomez is in the sentimental art film “Searching” by Victoria Mahoney. She’s wearing lingerie, so I guess that’s reason to talk about it? [The Superficial]

Jerry Saltz on Reddit AMA. Regular Saltz readers will be familiar with most of his answers, but he did remind us (AFC’s Paddy Johnson) that we like Francis Bacon a whole lot more than Saltz. His 2009 show at the Met was fantastic. [Vulture, summary]

An activist artist in Switzerland is gathering signatures for a minimum federal income distributed to all people. The New York Times’ Annie Lowry doesn’t think it’s that crazy, arguing that here and abroad it would only be a better use of money locked up in welfare. [New York Times]